Wichita Eagle: Nation and World

Police: 3 found dead in Wash. home

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 02:22 CST

Police in Spokane, Wash., say a woman and two children have been found dead in a triple homicide.

Capt. Frank Scalise called the deaths "a potential domestic violence" situation. The bodies were found Friday night when police responded to a 911 report of a dead body in a home.

The Spokesman-Review reports that a SWAT team and a helicopter are combing a wide swath of north Spokane in the search for a suspect.

Marine honored for Afghanistan counterattack

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 01:22 CST

A Marine based out of Camp Pendleton was awarded the Silver Star on Friday for courageous service during a bloody, six-hour firefight in the war in Afghanistan.

Sgt. Philip McCulloch Jr. was honored for his actions in a battle in the Sangin district on Jan. 8, 2011, according to U-T San Diego ( http://bit.ly/w0PvOZ). The firefight began while McCulloch's unit was on patrol and began taking fire from all directions.

McCulloch, who was 22 at the time, said the soldiers found themselves surrounded by Taliban forces. "There was no way out. So we just went toward the enemy," McCulloch told the newspaper.

Friday's College Basketball

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 02:22 CST

EAST

Columbia 86, Brown 60

Cornell 85, Yale 84, OT

Woman pleads guilty in NY newborn kidnap case

DAVID B. CARUSO — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 21:57 CST

A woman who snatched a newborn baby from a New York City hospital in 1987, then raised the child as her own for more than two decades, pleaded guilty to a kidnapping charge Friday as the girl's true mother wept in the courtroom.

Ann Pettway, 51, appeared resigned to a life behind bars as she entered the plea at a federal courthouse in Manhattan. Her voice was flat as she briefly recounted how she took a train from her home in Bridgeport, Conn., to Harlem Hospital, where she scooped up Carlina White, a 3-week-old baby who had been brought to the emergency room by her parents.

"I went to the hospital. I took a child," she said. "It was wrong."

Hotel marketed to gay travelers to open in NYC

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 20:07 CST

A hotel marketed specifically toward gay travelers is opening in the heart of New York City.

The hotel will be called THE OUT NYC. It's being touted as a "straight-friendly" gay boutique resort.

It's set to open March 1 in the Times Square area.

Coroner in Ohio changes ruling in 1972 death

JoANNE VIVIANO — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 21:03 CST

A coroner in southeast Ohio has changed the ruling in the 1972 death of a woman after her widower killed three relatives and himself last month in front of his cancer-stricken second wife - the first wife's sister.

Hocking County Coroner David Cummin said Friday that he changed the ruling of suicide in Carolyn Gilkey's death to undetermined after reviewing decades-old photos and reports. She suffered a shotgun wound to the head.

"When I look at the photos now ... it looks very staged," Cummin said. "I'm convinced she was sitting in the chair where she was, but the rest of it's pretty staged."

Obama budget projects $1.3 trillion deficit this year

Steven Thomma — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 19:57 CST

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama expects the federal budget deficit to reach $1.33 trillion this year, administration officials said Friday evening, the fourth straight year of trillion-dollar deficits.

The deficit already was projected to top $1 trillion when Obama took office in January 2009, as tax revenues dropped because of the Great Recession and spending spiked to bail out banks and auto companies. It eventually reached $1.55 trillion for 2009, followed by $1.37 trillion in fiscal 2010 and $1.36 trillion in fiscal 2011.

The tide of red ink, which started under President George W. Bush, has helped define Obama's entire term and will be a key issue in the fall campaign as he seeks a second term.

APNewsBreak: Satellite spots tanks in Syrian city

DAN ELLIOTT — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 00:52 CST

Satellite image provider DigitalGlobe Inc. released photos Friday that appear to show Syrian army tanks and other armored vehicles in the city of Homs.

DigitalGlobe said the images were taken late Friday morning Syrian time by the company's WorldView 2 satellite from about 480 miles above the Earth.

Stephen Wood, director of DigitalGlobe's analysis center, said the photos show tanks, armored personnel carriers and other armored vehicles in the southern part of the city, some of them near apartment buildings.

Ill. Sen. Mark Kirk moved to stroke rehab center

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 19:32 CST

Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk has left the Chicago hospital where he was treated after his stroke last month and has been transferred to a rehabilitation center.

Dr. Richard Harvey of the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago says a team of experts will spend the next few days assessing the 52-year-old Republican's condition. They will also design a rehabilitation program for him.

The doctor said Friday that Kirk's good general health and fitness level before his stroke will work in his favor as he recovers.

Fishermen meet amid bleak cod prospects

JAY LINDSAY — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 20:32 CST

Fishermen and federal officials grappled Friday with the increasingly bleak prospect of finding some way for the historic New England industry to avoid collapse amid troubles with the health of Gulf of Maine cod.

Their meeting came in the week after regional regulators bought fisherman a yearlong reprieve from what would have been devastating cuts in 2012. But projections discussed Friday showed fishermen still face disastrous cuts in 2013 that most won't survive.

"It's going to be hard to preserve the industry at those low numbers (in 2013) and that's something that concerns us a great deal," said Sam Rauch, the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's fisheries arm, who led the meeting of fishermen, scientists and regulators.

Comedian's BYU black history video goes viral

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 18:32 CST

A YouTube video of a white comedian who painted his face black and quizzed Brigham Young University students about Black History Month has brought some unwanted attention to the Mormon-run school.

Observers have called some student responses ignorant while others criticized the comedian's use of the 19th century theater technique considered racially offensive by black people.

Standup comic Dave Ackerman told ABC 4 that he was going for the shock factor.

Ill. man gets 3 years in erectile pump case

LAURA CRIMALDI — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 20:17 CST

An Illinois man was sentenced Friday by a federal judge in Rhode Island to more than three years in prison for shipping unwanted penis enlargers to diabetes patients as part of a larger fraud scheme that prosecutors say bilked $2.2 million from Medicare over four years.

Gary Winner, 50, of Wheeling, Ill., must also forfeit more than $2.2 million that prosecutors say Medicare lost because of the plot.

U.S. District Court Judge William E. Smith also ordered Winner to pay a $12,500 fine and serve three years of supervised release following his prison sentence.